


9th grade mental illness

by JeS3004



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anorexia, Bulimia, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22248145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeS3004/pseuds/JeS3004





	9th grade mental illness

People often ask me what’s it like to have a mental illness. I think Mark Henick described it perfectly at his Ted Talk. He said, “It’s like being an asthmatic who has lost his glasses in a hurricane.”  
When I entered fourth grade, I wasn’t yet 10. The day before my birthday I heard kids whispering behind my back about how I was “So Fat!!” or “Such a Pig!!”. That night I sat in my room and thought about what they had said. Then a voice said to me “I can help you prove them wrong.” This was “Mia” (bulimia) introducing herself. I listened to what the voice told me, and within weeks I started to lose weight. By the time third trimester had started, I had lost seventy pounds. The only downside was that I couldn’t eat without puking afterwards. Eventually, my parents caught on. After school ended they sent me to “prison”(treatment facility). Little did I know that this would be where I would spend the next three summer vacations. After two months of hell (“throwing up” feelings, hiding food, secretly exercising, “coping”) they released me with one hundred and fifty more pounds than when I got there, and “coping mechanisms”.  
As I started fifth grade, I was determined to get back on track before my birthday and to lose weight by the end of the school year. By my birthday “Mia” had left me and been replaced by “Ana”(anorexia). “Ana” was better, she was more elusive. No more forcing myself to throw up after I ate. No more feeling of fire on the inside of my throat, no more wondering if I smelled of acid. “There is no need to purge if you don’t eat” , “Ana” told me. I trusted “Ana”, and it worked. My parents were blind to it, at least at first.  
I was happy. I felt stronger; but then I got into a relationship with Ken. We were dating, and they noticed that I wasn’t eating. I told Ken that I wasn’t hungry & I had already ate. Ken responded by saying, “Can we cut the crap, I know that you are restricting.” When they said that it felt like everything I had worked for was crashing down around me, so I ran away in tears. The next day was the last day of school; Ken had told my parents, so I was going to be spending another summer in treatment. I was angry with Ken for telling my parents, so I broke up with them; they understood and gave me a note which they later posted online. That note got me through treatment facility in a useful manner, because unlike last time, I actually tried to get better. When I got back from treatment, Ken asked if we could still be friends and I said yes. I also told them how much the note meant to me. Around Christmas, they moved away, but we stayed in contact, at least till summer.  
After returning from a third summer at the treatment facility this time for self-harm (burning), I started seventh grade. The beginning of the school year is a blur because of the meds I was on, but around the new year, I stopped taking my meds (my parents weren’t happy). After I stopped them, I got into a spiral of self-loathing and self-hate because of the unending torment from my peers. Around the end of the school year my grades were “super bad” (C+ to B), and I felt worthless and a waste of space. I wrote a suicide note during free write in Language Arts. Then I asked to go to the bathroom and took three bottles of antidepressants and one and a half bottles of Advil. I honestly believed I was going to die, but what I didn’t know was that my friends, saw what I had written and had both asked to go to the nurse. If it weren’t for them, I probably would be dead. They called an ambulance and forced me to puke. Three weeks later I was released from the hospital with strict visitation rules and was advised to change schools.  
After the summer, I started eighth grade at Yellow Wood Academy because of their one on one teaching style and strict no-bullying policy. After a few weeks of being the new kid, I fit right in. We had not told the school much of my background, so they did not know about my suicide attempt, or my self-harm (cutting/burning/written), or my Eating Disorder (ED), but I was fine with that. I was finally happy excited to go to school. After a month of school I stopped taking my meds again, but this time I was okay because I had a strong healthy support system. By the end of the school year, I no longer had two friends I had an entire school of people who were there for me and supported me. The last day of school was full of tears because it was highly likely that I would not be coming back. During the summer I went to two really fun camps; however when I was at these camps I could not help stressing out about returning to Mercer Island schools, and due to the self-made stress, I started cutting again. Even though I started cutting again, the summer I was fourteen was the best summer I had since I was nine.


End file.
